


The Ritual

by PolsVoice



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: A blast from the past - Freeform, Halloween, Magic, batfamily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 12:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16197488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PolsVoice/pseuds/PolsVoice
Summary: Halloween night was never exactly straight-forward in Gotham, but when Bruce gets caught in the middle of an amateurs spell, he ends up having a series of encounters that he won't soon forget.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s always cold in Gotham on Halloween night. 

Bruce honestly can’t remember a year that hadn’t been spent fighting off the strange and eerie cold that seems to settle over the city like a damp cloth every October 31st. Every year or two a heavy fog would roll in from the bay to accompany the chill in the air. 

Tonight is clear though. Batman’s eyes watch closely over the streets of Gotham. He’s looking for signs of trouble, but the only thing he sees this night are excited, animated children in colourful costumes rushing the streets with their smiling parents in tow. The only sounds picked up by his ear are the typical sounds of the city, traffic, the steam clock downtown striking eight o’clock, the sound of waves rolling in from Gotham Harbour, all drowned out by the exuberant laughter of children and party-goers alike. 

It isn’t surprising. Halloween night was notoriously quiet for patrol most years. Bruce has his theories as to why, as do several of his protégés. Stephanie, perhaps speaking from a place of experience, insisted that some criminals were taking their own children out, leaving them far too busy to cause trouble. Bruce doesn’t know if that had necessarily been the case for the newest Batgirl, but he did know better than to argue the point with her. It wasn’t his place to question her parents, trivialize a pleasant memory, or bring up an unpleasant one. 

Dick, the bleeding heart of the family, seemed to think that even the vilest criminals were hesitant to cause any real trouble on a night when there were sure to be hordes of children just standing around waiting to get caught in the crossfire. Bruce can’t quite wrap his head around that one enough to find it plausible. After all, he’s never met a psychopath in a ridiculous costume that had hesitated to do something awful just because of the presence of a child or two nearby. But again, Bruce didn’t argue the point with him. Dick’s unwavering faith in humanity, whether founded or unfounded, was too inspiring to risk shaking. 

It’s Tim who had produced the best theory, as far as Bruce is concerned. Bruce had asked the boy once directly a few years back, why he thought crime stood still for one single night. Tim, the ever-logical and most practical of his sons, had momentarily thought the problem over before simply shrugging and suggesting that there were sure to be a lot of witnesses out on the streets on Halloween, any of which could interfere with plans or, at least, identify someone later in court. Bruce had been, and was still, pleased with the solid reasoning behind the statement. 

Halloween wasn’t exclusively quiet. Bruce can remember the occasional noteworthy event over the years. Like the year Scarecrow had given out candy laced with fear toxin, or the year Poison Ivy had decided to attack the city with giant jack-o-lanterns. Those nights had been filled with action, to say the least. 

But tonight isn’t going to be one of those nights, Batman knows. Nothing has happened since his patrol started. Not the barest hint of a villainous plot, or a single ransom note sent, not even the usual muggings and shenanigans that were so common to the city. It was to be one of those quiet, boring Halloween patrols, one where he would ultimately just spend most of the night watching children trick-or-treat from the shadows. 

Trick-or-treating was unfamiliar territory for Bruce. Bruce had, over the years, brought five separate children into his home and yet, still felt as though he had never really participated in the tradition. 

Dick had never really participated in traditional Halloween activities at the circus. They usually had big shows around that time and were rarely in one place for very long. Dick, as a consequence, had been extremely enthusiastic about the whole idea when Alfred had first brought it up. Not that the exuberant eight-year-old needed the encouragement. He was a natural performer, and the whimsy and playful nature of Halloween drew the boy in like a moth to flame. 

Dick had persistently, and loudly, tried to convince Bruce to participate those first few years. Bruce had never denied him the opportunity to take the night off and go have fun, but the Batman had work to do. 

Dick never seemed to have any trouble convincing someone to take him out. Alfred had insisted on accompanying him out to trick-or-treat the first couple years, though Barry became a popular choice after the friendship with Wally West had taken off. Although ‘Uncle Clark’ was always more than happy to step in for such occasions too, Bruce recalls, gritting his teeth in sudden annoyance. Bruce can still remember the sparkle in his young wards eye the first time Dick’s precious ‘Uncle Clark’ had volunteered to take Dick, Wally and Donna out on Halloween night. Even Oliver, reluctant as he was to take on responsibility back in those days, had taken Dick and Roy to some sort of Halloween event once. Bruce, to this day, still has no idea how Dick managed to get the entirety of the JLA wrapped around his little finger. And yet, ironically, the only member who hadn’t spent a true civilian Halloween with him, was Bruce. 

Jason had been a completely different story. He’d grown up in crime alley, with barely two nickels for him and his parents to rub together. Any money the family could have spared was more than likely used to score drugs or put towards his father’s latest Ponzi scheme. Jason had mentioned going trick-or-treating with a couple of the other kids from crime alley, but had never gone deep into the specifics when asked, simply saying that a rich kid like Bruce wouldn’t understand anyway.

By the time Jason had come to live at the manor, he was too angry and too jaded to derive any joy in simple childhood activities. In fact, Bruce can still recall Jason declaring loudly that he was way too old for that kid stuff. 

But his second ward, his first son, never seemed to hold the animosity towards Halloween that he did for many other holidays. Christmas was declared ‘too frivolous’, Valentine’s Day ‘too commercial’, and St. Patrick’s Day was ‘pointless’, because Jason ‘wasn’t old enough to drink yet’. But Halloween, whenever the topic came up, was regarded as ‘okay’. 

Bruce never pressed the issue, but he suspects heavily, even now, that he has Poison Ivy to thank for the boys tolerance of the holiday. It was Jason who had been Robin the year of the giant jack-o-lantern attack. It had been a bad night as far as Bruce was concerned. They’d gotten too comfortable, he’d gotten too comfortable, and been caught blindsided. Batman had been forced to call in Nightwing for backup. The teen hadn’t been happy, and neither had the Dark Knight. They’d been fighting for months at that point. His presence had not only darkened Batman’s mood, but had also sparked the two boys’ jealousy issues towards one another, leaving Bruce to break up not only the fighting in the streets, but the fighting between his two protégés as well. 

But it had been worth it. Bruce remembers the three of them at the end of the night, standing in the street together, threat neutralized and Ivy back behind bars where she belongs. There were pumpkin bits everywhere, orange slime dripping from even the lampposts before hitting the near-icy pavement below. Bruce remembers Nightwing miserably picking pumpkin seeds out of his too-long hair between shivers. He recalls the feeling of slime weighting his own cape down heavily, the smell of fresh pumpkin lingering for weeks despite Alfred’s best attempts. But He also clearly remembers Jason, standing in front of them both with the biggest, brightest smile Bruce had ever seen on his young face before exclaiming that this had been the coolest. Halloween. Ever! 

Jason had looked so innocent and childlike in that moment that it had made even the Batman smile. Bruce holds no particular affinity for the holiday, but that memory is still one of his favorites, even after years of patrol. 

Tim, as usual, had been the easiest of his boys to deal with. He participated in normal Halloween activities without complaint. Helping Alfred decorate or carving pumpkins with Dick. He would even occasionally dress up if someone coerced him into it. 

When it had come Time for Bruce to ask his new Robin if he’d like to have Halloween night off to go Trick-or-treating or hang out with friends, however, the boy had politely declined, saying that he’d rather go out patrolling as Robin if that was okay. It had been music to Bruce’s ears. 

The first year Tim had been Robin had been exceptionally quiet, even for a Halloween patrol. The Joker had escaped Arkham the week prior, and though he hadn’t made his presence known yet, the people of Gotham by and large kept their children indoors that Halloween. Batman and Robin ended up seated on a rooftop near the downtown core, watching as the few people on the streets below went about their festivities. Batman had found himself almost wishing that the Joker would make a move just so he would have something to do, but Robin didn’t seem to be bored in the slightest, surprisingly, and the two of them had made something of a tradition of it over the years. 

Bruce figures it was the people-watching that Tim really liked. The boy’s mind never seemed to stop turning, his nature so curious that he would just get lost in whatever small details he could find out about a person. And he always seemed to take so much joy from it. Tim didn’t usually talk very much during their annual Halloween stake-out, but Bruce never failed to see the small hint of child-like wonder that would cross his face when he saw a costume he particularly liked, sometimes even drawing Batman’s attention to the fact that some kid was dressed up like ‘a near-perfect Captain Kirk’. Bruce rarely, if ever, got the references, and never quite understood why they excited Tim so much, but Bruce always enjoyed the time he spent on those quiet nights humouring the boy. 

Bruce is sure Tim had been trick-or-treating at some point in his life, though if it had been his parents or the nanny who had taken him was quite debatable. Bruce thinks that may be the reason Tim never seemed to hold any real opinion about the holiday as his other sons did. Tim simply has no strong emotional memories of it to draw upon. Halloween for a young Tim Drake was most likely a quiet affair of picking out a costume at the store and having the nanny take him out for a couple hours after dinner to collect candy his parents could have easily purchased for him if he’d wanted it. 

But Halloween patrols had been something that Tim had seemed to always look forward to. It was probably nice for Tim to have a single night where nothing much was expected of him. A night where he could just sit quietly and enjoy looking over the city as adults and children alike let their inhibitions go and just had fun for a change. A night where he could watch people in unusual costumes play pretend. 

Bruce wouldn’t be at all surprised if Tim was somewhere in the city watching the trick-or-treaters at this very moment. Perhaps the teen would even see Dick and Damian out amongst them. 

Bruce had honestly thought that Jason would be the toughest nut he’d ever have to crack when it came to holidays like Halloween. Then Damian had come into his life. 

The boy had refused, vehemently, to participate in anything even remotely Halloween related. Dick had tried tirelessly to entice him on multiple occasions, while Stephanie had offered to sew him any costume he wanted despite her busy schedule. But even their combined efforts were not enough and Damian was having none of it, insisting that he was not a mere child before finally telling them exactly where they could stuff their stupid ‘holiday’. 

It was that that had caused Dick to finally snap. It had been a sudden and unexpected outburst, and not typical of his eldest at all. Bruce had been present for the whole event, though stunned into silence at the breakfast table as Dick had told Damian in no uncertain terms, that he would be going out for Halloween whether he liked it or not before unleashing a guilt trip that even Alfred would have been proud of. Bruce wasn’t sure of forcing the young boy into participation was necessarily the best way to deal with the situation, but Dick did have a valid point when he questioned how exactly Damian planned to protect childhood innocence if he couldn’t actually understand it. 

Damian had conceded, reluctantly, after that, on the condition that he would not be trick-or-treating with the West children, or the Kent boy or, god forbid, the Harper girl and that this would be the only year. Ever. Bruce was honestly still surprised that Dick had convinced him at all. Not to say that Bruce wasn’t still glad for it. It would be good for Damian to have at least one typical childhood experience under his belt, even if Bruce did agree that the holiday was sort of pointless. 

Bruce is thankful that he had never had to deal with any of this when it came to Cass. She was too old for trick-or-treating by the time she had joined the family, and much preferred the quiet holidays they would all spend together like Christmas and Thanksgiving to the flashier, more exuberant ones. Bruce wishes deep down that she had come back to Gotham for the holiday anyway. Dick and Tim had tried to persuade her, and more than likely Stephanie and Barbara as well, but she just calmly informed them that she’s rather come home for thanksgiving instead, because Halloween didn’t have turkey. Bruce couldn’t really argue the logic. 

It’s movement that finally brings him out of his musings. A robed figure, followed by another, ducking into a nearby warehouse. 

The docks were notorious for criminal activity most days of the year. It was an easy way to get shipments of illegal goods, and sometimes worse, in and out of Gotham, and it was free of witnesses during most times of the night. It made an ideal hotspot for shady people to do their shady dealings. That’s exactly why Bruce had come tonight. 

He knows the warehouse to be operational during the day. It was largely a storage facility and distribution centre for a sizeable hardwood flooring company. Best Bruce could tell, the business was legit, even though the owner had been in some legal troubles a few years back. 

But it wasn’t operational at night, nor did any of the employees come to work in hooded cloaks. 

Bruce swings in closer, silent against the crash of waves just off of the docks. He watches keenly, the forms just visible when he peers inside an upper window. There are more than two of them. All robed, seemingly setting up a sort of scene. It’s entirely possible that this is just a group of wayward and bored teenagers trying to scare each other on Halloween night. Batman doesn’t usually interfere with non-violent crimes like breaking and entering, there’s usually much bigger fish to fry in Gotham, but there’s a nagging feeling, a suspicion that he should look on this time. 

It could be teenagers, sure, but the much more suspicious, paranoid part of Bruce insists that it also could be magic. It’s obvious to him that they aren’t seasoned magicians by the way they fumble with their supplies, the way they argue amongst one another on the placement of the candles and consult their phones when they can’t agree. 

But that’s no consolation. An inexperienced magic user can be just as, if not more dangerous, than an experienced magician. They were careless, and overconfident and usually had just enough knowledge to get themselves into a bad situation, with very little knowledge of how to get themselves out. The last thing anyone needs tonight is a bunch of foolish youth unleashing a horde of the undead upon Gotham. Or worse. 

Bruce also knows that, despite his skills, his own intelligence, that he is no real match for magic users. Magic is something that he could never really wrap his head around. It has to logical rules. It wasn’t tangible, or predictable. As far as Bruce is concerned, that makes it a threat of the highest level. 

Bruce moves closer to the small window, enters through it quietly, but realises quickly that he’s just seconds too late, that the ritual has already started. It leaves him in an awkward position, if nothing else. He has no idea what the ritual was meant to accomplish, or what he would prevent if he stopped it. But he also recalls Zatanna explaining to him that sometimes interrupting a ritual, once started, was worse than letting it carry out. The effect could become…skewed, as she’d put it, before she explained that it was often difficult to reverse a spell that wasn’t complete. She hadn’t elaborated, and Bruce isn’t sure he would have fully understood her if she had. 

“Non manes evocant,” a figure standing in the centre reads out slowly and awkwardly. She’s female, by the sounds of it. And young. The words are Latin, roughly translating to ‘we call ghosts’. He had been fearing something like this. Sure, he had fought a ghost or two in his time, but not often solo, and never going into it fully blind. 

“Um…nobiscum commu—communicare…quod vivos,” She continues, hesitating as she stumbles over the words. Bruce thinks the translation is supposed to be along the lines of ‘communicate with us, the living’, but her pronunciation is truly atrocious. He shifts, creeping along the tops of palettes so as to get a better look at them. 

There’s six of them total. The other five are kneeling, though it’s apparent that none are particularly large individuals. Most of them wear robes similar to the two that he’d seen enter the building, though one member of the party wears only a black hoodie instead. They are teens, possibly young adults, and they have no business here. Bruce wonders how they managed to get in at all. perhaps one or more of them have parents who work for the company. Key holders who would be busy tonight, perhaps with younger siblings, and wouldn’t be paying much mind to their keys or their older children. His own children had pulled similar stunts a thousand times over. 

“Foribus…foribus…aperietur,” The girl falters from her position in front of the strange formation of teens. It looks to Bruce as though they were in a sort of pentacle formation, each child acting as a point of the symbol amongst the candles that flickered around them. 

“God, Kim, you suck at Latin,” One of the kids comments harshly. Bruce can’t quite tell if it’s the voice of another female or a prepubescent male. 

“Well then you read it, you dick!” The girl, Kim apparently, in the centre of the formation bites back harshly as she lowers her phone to her side angrily. Bruce finds himself amused by her choice of insult, but only momentarily. He wonders from his perch if this had been a waste of time, if this is just exactly what it appears. A bunch of foolish teens playing a Halloween prank. 

“Fine. Trade places with me,” The next kid says with bravado as they rise, holding out a hand for the girl’s phone. Bruce watches her reluctantly hand over the device to the smaller figure before taking their place. The way the figure moves and speaks makes Bruce think that he’s probably a young male. 

“Haec nox est porta dormientium,” The boy says proudly and dramatically, though in actual fact did no better than the girl before him. Bruce contemplates leaving, perhaps finding something more pressing to occupy Batman’s time with, but something stops him. A chill in the air that he shouldn’t feel through his armour, the feeling that he is being watched making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The feeling in his gut that tells him something isn’t right. That perhaps it’s best he’s here. 

“id quod oblatum est in herbis commutationem pro tempore,” The boy reads, pronunciation so poor that Bruce can barely get the gist of it. Something about an exchange and time? A fear, perhaps irrational, had bloomed deep in his gut by the time the figure in the hoodie twists and grabs something from behind himself, offering it to the boy in the centre. Bruce can’t see what the object is, but the chill in his bones has sunk deeper, the feeling of eyes on him distressing, because he knows it’s only them in the building. 

“So what now?” Another girl asks, her blonde hair hanging out the front of her dark cloak as she kneels, “We make the offering and wait for it to talk to us?” 

“Yeah, I guess so,” the first girl answers after nobody else steps up, “You gotta say the words first though. Like, properly,” She adds, sparing a glance at the boy in the centre. 

“Right. Uh, fiat pax mortuis eorum loquuntur,” The boy says, raising the object in his hand. Bruce’s eyes widen behind his cowl, a sudden urgency. ‘Let the dead speak’. It’s too open ended, leaves too much room for bastardization. It fees wrong, he needs to step in. 

“Fiat!” the boy yelled as he throws whatever it is in his hand across the room. It connects squarely and harmlessly with the breast plate of Batman’s costume. 

A deafening silence descends upon the warehouse as the stunned kids look on with wide eyes and open mouths. Bruce waits at his full height, cape encompassing his form as he stares them down. It’s the blonde girl who breaks first. 

“Oh my god, we summoned a demon!” She screams hysterically as she rises to her feet, “please don’t hurt us!” she begs as she backs away. The boy in the hoodie seems convinced of her words as well, rising to his feet next, knocking over a candle onto the cement floor as he shuffles. 

“What are you doing here? This is private property,” Batman informs them coldly. More coldly than he’d intended perhaps. Magic is nothing to be toyed with, even if not a single one of them looks competent enough to pull a rabbit from a hat. Besides, the docks were unsafe for a bunch of teens at night. Did they have any idea how many human traffickers passed through here? Traffickers that would do just about anything to get their hands on a bunch of naive young teenagers?

Bruce feels a slight bit of remorse when he hears the blonde girl dissolve into a tearful apology before making a run for it, the boy in the hoodie quick on her heels, but he knows it’s for the best. 

“Dude we better get out of here. I…I think that’s Nightwing,” one of the previously silent boys whispers to another. Bruce doesn’t break his demeanor, but shakes his head internally. How hard was it to tell Batman and Nightwing apart? Nightwing didn’t even wear the same colours as the rest of them, nor did he wear a cape or a cowl. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, unfortunately. They are, after all, the subject of legend around Gotham and these kids are clearly not the most intelligent, well-informed bunch. Still, Red Robin had not appreciated being confused for Red Hood last week. At least they both had red in their name, Bruce supposes. 

“I think Nightwing hangs out in Bludhaven?” The other boy replies, clearly thinking that the ominous figure won’t hear him if he speaks softly enough. How the boy had failed to remember that Bludhaven was little more than a nuclear wasteland these days, Bruce doesn’t know. His own boys would never be caught so uninformed. 

“Run! Who cares?! Just run!” The boy standing in the centre pipes in suddenly before dropping the first girl’s phone in a sudden panic and starting for the door. One of the two whispering boys follows, but the other stays, unwilling to leave the girl behind. 

“You two,” Batman addresses them directly, “Put out these candles, all of them, before you start a fire. Then go straight home,” he tells them. The boy nods hurriedly, as does the girl. 

“O-okay. Okay, Batman,” the girl says after a moment. It’s enough for Bruce, who takes out his grapple, fires it into the ceiling once and using the momentum to swing straight out the window he’d come in from, disappearing just as suddenly as he had appeared. 

Bruce hangs by closely for a while, to make sure they two kids did indeed put out the candles as they’d promised. He watches from a neighbouring rooftop as one by one, the flames are put out. But the eerie feeling he’d felt from in the warehouse hasn’t left him. He knows the area is clear, has already checked it, but it still feels as though there are eyes on him. Boring into him. 

He busies himself by assessing the substance that had hit his uniform during the ritual. It has the appearance of chalk, with various herbs and what looks to be salt thrown in for good measure. Bruce bags a small sample, though he heavily suspects that when he does go back to the cave and tests it, he will find nothing that couldn’t be purchased in any local grocery store. 

But something still feels so wrong. Jarring. Oppressive. A toxin perhaps? But no. This isn’t fear toxin, at least not any variety he’d ever encountered before. Ivy and the Joker used toxins too, but both tended to announce their presence well before spraying their own venoms around. Besides, last he’d checked, all three of them were still safely locked away in Arkham. For now anyway. 

Bruce watches as a strange mist starts to roll in just after the teens put out the last of their candles. At first he thinks it’s just fog come in from Gotham Bay, but he soon realises that the area above and immediately surrounding the water is clear, that the mist seems to be confined to the rooftop. The odd chill he’d felt in the warehouse is back, and he feels it in his bones. 

Then he sees a figure, standing behind him in his peripheral vision, but he doesn’t turn immediately. This figure, this person, is good. Bruce hadn’t heard him coming, hadn’t sensed him until he’d wanted to be sensed. He thinks at first, for a brief moment, that it’s perhaps one of his sons. After all, there aren’t many people who could sneak up on Batman, let alone many who would even dare to try. But the presence is unfamiliar. 

Bruce turns in an instant, falling into a fighting stance before the man behind him can make a move. But the man doesn’t do the same, shows no signs of hostility. Bruce waits, unmoving as his eyes adjust. He blinks once. Twice. 

Then his stance falls slack as a realization dawns on him. He knows this man. And yet, his presence here is nothing short of impossible. 

“Nice night, don’t you think?” The man greets him simply, yet politely, as he had so many other times at the galas and events they frequented. Bruce eyes him closely. So closely. The brown hair, greying at the edges, the shirt and pants that were always so much more casual than the attire typical of most of the businessmen that called Gotham home. The man looked unfocused to Bruce’s eye, as if he was being viewed through a filter. But still Bruce knows, knew, this man. 

“Jack? Jack Drake?” Bruce says slowly, trying to digest the words even as they fall from his slack jaw. Jack Drake, the father of his third son, had been dead for years. And yet here he is on a rooftop at the docks, taking a step closer to Bruce with his hands resting casually in his pockets.

“Yes,” The man confirms with a small nod, “It’s nice to see you again, Bruce.”


	2. Chapter 2

“What—I don’t…” Bruce sputters. Because this is wrong. It’s impossible. Jack Drake, Tim’s dad is…Tim’s dad is…“You’re…”

“Dead. Yes,” the man replies so calmly and matter-of-factly that Bruce actually feels a chill run up his spine. Jack looks just as Bruce remembers him. Greying brown hair, bright but tired eyes that seem to see so much more than he lets on and yet so little at the same time. The way he stands now, calm, collected and yet determined, reminds Bruce so much of Tim. And god…what is he going to tell Tim? 

Nothing. He’s going to tell Tim nothing, because this isn’t real. 

“Toxin. I need to get back to the cave,” Bruce exclaims. Saying the words aloud, to a dead man, seems moderately insane in hindsight, but it has to be a toxin. There must be something he hadn’t detected in that bag that the teenagers had thrown. Maybe there was more to their gathering than met the eye?

“Bruce, I promise you this isn’t a toxin. It’s just part of the ritual,” Jack says evenly with the hint of a sigh as he takes a step forward, hands resting in his pockets. 

“The ritual?” Bruce pauses to glance sidelong at the man in front of him. He’s intrigued despite himself. It must be toxin. Or a hallucination. It must be. But what if there was a chance it was not? What if it truly had been magic? 

“People have been preforming them for centuries in different forms. Native American shaman believed that they could cast spells to call upon the spirits of their ancestors. The Babylonians and Egyptians would host elaborate, days-long rituals just to speak to the spirits of the dead. Even the bible references necromancy, though I’m sure you were already aware,” Jack says with a sharp, humourless laugh. Bruce had indeed known all of that, though Jack had probably known much, much more about the subject at one time. He was an archeologist once. An archeologist with good business sense, who saw an opportunity and ran with it. He made quite a name for himself over time, built a company that any businessman would be proud of. But it came at a cost. 

Tim didn’t talk much about his parents, work or otherwise, when they were alive. He rarely, if ever, talks about them now. Bruce understands. He almost never speaks of his own parents either. So many therapists, and so many friends, have told him over the years that talking about it helped, that words would somehow make the sharp sting of pain ease. But it never did. The only thing Bruce ever found that took the edge off of his own grief was vengeance. Tim may have different motivations, different ways of coping, but still he almost never speaks of them. Bruce never blames him. He knows well that it hurts to remember, and it hurts even more to wonder what life would be like if they were still there. 

“Hypothetically, if this is what you say it is, what ritual was it?” Bruce asks pulling his cape tighter around his shoulder. His eyes never leave the man in front of him, though he makes no threatening gestures. 

“Ha! Damned if I know. I know no one technically speaks Latin anymore, but I couldn’t even begin to tell you what they were trying to say,” Jack says with a small, but genuine laugh, “best I can tell, they were trying to open up a gateway of sorts when you stepped in and inadvertently became that gateway. Or at least, your armour did,” he continues with a shrug that reminds Bruce so much of the shrug Tim gave him last week when Bruce had asked if he wanted pizza or Chinese. It hits much too close to home. 

“Or it’s toxin,” Bruce points out with narrowed eyes. 

“Go ahead, run your test. I know you carry them. Tim showed me once,” Jack challenges him, standing tall as he watches Bruce with hard eyes. Bruce knows he’s right. Knows he should have pulled out the test kit that he keeps on him already. He isn’t sure what made him hesitate, but his sons father’s challenge seems to be enough to motivate him. 

The small device plunges into Bruce’s skin where he’s pulled back his glove, only just deep enough to draw a drop or two of blood. But he knows the result well before the screen flashes. 

“…It’s not toxin,” Bruce says slowly, blinking once at the screen. He’d known it wasn’t deep down. None of this felt like any toxin he’d ever encountered. Toxins were potent, but distinct. Fear toxin was the hardest to detect without a test, because unlike the others it always felt real. But while Bruce admits that the thought of being confronted by his adopted children’s parents makes him more nervous than a breakout at Arkham, it isn’t exactly his greatest fear. 

“Satisfied now?” Jack asks, drawing his hands out of his pockets to cross his arms in front of his chest. 

“No,” Bruce admits. What really bothers him is a single, unanswered question, “If you really are Jack Drake, and I’m not saying I believe you are, what are you doing here?” Bruce asks even though he dreads the answer. 

The man doesn’t answer immediately. Bruce watches his eyebrow quirk, his eyes turn away a brief moment before he frowns. “I think you know as well as I do that we only have one common interest, Bruce.”

“Tim,” Of course it was Tim. It would always have come back to Tim. Bruce can feel a pit forming in his stomach, though his face shows nothing. It’s only years of training that allow him to keep any sort of composure at all. Why would Jack Drake be here now? Was it simply a matter of opportunity, or was it a matter of urgency? 

“Yeah,” Jack says slowly, seemingly starring Bruce down as his stomach continues to twist angrily. Bruce can’t identify the feeling coursing through him. Guilt. So much guilt. And shame. Tim deserved better than him, a man who couldn’t even tell the boy when he’d done a good job on a case, never mind truly express what the boy meant to him. And then, suddenly, there was fear. Fear because Jack knows, had probably always known, how inadequate he was. That fear was minor, however, compared to the fear that grew from his mind rather than his heart. The fear that came when he started to rationalize the situation. Was Jack Drake’s visit a matter of opportunity or urgency? 

“Is he in danger?” Bruce asks hurriedly, whole body on full alert. The thought of one of his kids, of Tim, in some sort of danger…

“Danger? Constantly, ever since meeting you. But no. Not tonight. He’s sitting on a rooftop downtown watching the trick-or-treaters,” Jack deadpans with a bitter almost-laugh. Bruce feels the tension he didn’t know he’d built up in his shoulders ebb. It doesn’t absolve him of whatever comeuppance he’s sure to receive, but…Tim is safe. No matter what, at least Tim is safe. 

“He often does that on Halloween,” Bruce replies somewhat absently. He intends to buy himself some time to figure out what it is Jack wants. Some time to get the upper hand. 

“I never knew that he enjoyed such a thing. I didn’t know he had a Halloween tradition at all,” Jack laments with a sigh, and for a long moment, the man’s eyes are a million miles away. “There’s a lot of things I didn’t know about him,” he admits, the sorrow in his voice subtle, but palpable. 

“Are…are you angry that I adopted him?” Bruce asks carefully. He dreads the answer. He’d only been Tim’s father for a relatively short while, but the thought of Tim being adopted by someone else, someone who wasn’t worthy of him, feels like a tight fist around Bruce’s heart. 

“Bruce, no, of course not,” Jack says with a shake of his head “I’m glad you adopted him. You gave him the family that Janet and I just…couldn’t. In a lot of ways, you were more of a father to him than I was,” He continues sadly. It should be an affirmation, maybe even a compliment, but the words sound wrong to Bruce. 

“You’re his father. I’m…I’m…,” He hesitates, unsure of how to finish his own thought. Bruce would never admit openly how insecure the thought of his boy’s parents made him. How could someone ever truly be a replacement for the parents they’d lost? They were their parents, the people they held in highest regard. 

Bruce is a substitute, at best. He isn’t his own parents, or Alfred. He can’t foresee a time in the future where he would ever be able to tell his kids openly just how much he loves them or how proud he is. He isn’t the kind of man who could give Tim the emotional security and reassurance he needed. 

“I was his father. You’re his father now,” Jack states as though it were fact, “that’s why I’m here.” 

“I don’t understand,” Bruce admits. Jack eyes him down wearily a moment, and Bruce knows that look. The man is trying to decide if he believes him or not. Tim used to wear a similar expression when he was sizing someone up before he got good at hiding it. Jack doesn’t know that Bruce would never say the words if they weren’t true, especially in the cowl. It doesn’t take long for the features on the other man’s face to ease slightly, but Bruce can’t help the fleeting thought that Tim would have known the words were genuine the moment he’d uttered them. 

“Tim’s been distant, hasn’t he? Deflective? Secretive?” Jack phrases it as a series of questions, but it’s really a statement. A statement that makes Bruce pause, his mind start to race. 

Indeed, Tim has been all of those things and more the past few months. Bruce had brushed it off. Tim was always independent. He was growing up. He wanted his space, he wanted to make a name for himself away from Batman, Bruce had told himself. It hadn’t quite been true, and he’d known it. 

It was one thing for Red Robin to want to go off on solo adventures, but it was quite another when Tim Drake had a new excuse for why he wouldn’t be home for dinner four nights out of the week. Bruce had taken it at face value. Tim is trustworthy more often than not, though Bruce wonders now if he should have looked into Tim’s alibis more closely than he did, and he isn’t one to run head-first into danger without a plan. Tim is competent and sensible. He isn’t a thrill seeker like Dick, nor hungry for a fight like Jason. When it came to Tim, Bruce didn't have to deal with inexplicable death wishes like with Cass, or dangerous over-confidence like with Damian. Tim was the one he didn’t have to worry about…and yet, in some ways, he was somehow the one Bruce worried about the most. 

“Go on,” Bruce urges him, neither confirming nor denying. Not admitting innocence nor guilt. Jack nods before turning away slightly, his eyes looking over the bay briefly before coming back to meet Bruce’s dead on. 

“He did that with me too,” Jack admits, then lets out a hollow, mirthless chuckle, “I blamed you for that for the longest time. I stayed up at night just…hating you for turning Tim into this kid I didn’t even know,” Jack pauses then, thoughtfully, before he works up the nerve to continue, “A part of me still resents you for ever letting him put on a mask in the first place, but the truth is that you weren’t the only one to blame. He’d been keeping secrets from us for a decade before he’d even met you. He’d led this double life for years and I had no idea.” 

Bruce says nothing, because there is nothing he can say. Apparition or not, the look on Jack’s face, the strain in his words…it drives into him like a knife. It may not have started with him, but Bruce played his part in driving that wedge deeper between father and son. Bruce has no idea how to even address the topic and admit his own guilt, never mind apologize.Luckily, Jack continues before he has to. 

“Look, the point is Tim doesn’t tell people when something is wrong. He tries to deal with things on his own and when he can’t he…he goes back to what he knows. He goes back to being alone,” Jack says with a forceful wave of one hand “it’s our fault. We always put him second,” he adds tightly. 

“You think that someone should intervene?” Bruce surmises. He needs to keep the focus where it belongs, after all. He can feel guilty later, at home, but now…he still has no clue why any of this is happening. He’d decided some time ago to entertain this situation for Tim’s sake, but the whole ordeal is leaving him terribly off-balance. Nervous and shaky in a way that he isn’t used to and he doesn't like it one bit. 

“I think you should have intervened a long time ago, but it’s not as though I could just call you up, is it?” Jack barks at him with a glare, sudden and fierce, that makes Bruce recoil slightly in shock, “your family’s entire dynamic changed and you never thought to address it? To ask Tim why he isn’t around anymore?!” The man continued, voice rising in a way Bruce has only heard a handful of times. He has to physically swallow his own guilt before speaking. 

“Tim doesn’t do things without a reason,” Bruce states, though is it to reassure Jack or himself? He’d used that excuse many times rather than question his son. Tim was smart. Tim was careful. Tim always had a reason behind whatever he did. But Bruce hardly ever asked about those reasons. He didn’t want to cause any unnecessary conflict. He knows, deep down, that it was because he didn’t want Tim to pull away any further away than he already had. He also knows, deep down, that even that wasn’t a good enough excuse. “I wanted to ask, but I thought that…I just thought that…”

“I get it, Bruce. You pushed too hard with Dick and he rebelled, you pushed even harder with Jason and he died. I can’t…I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like. But Tim isn’t Dick or Jason. He doesn’t need to fight for his independence, he’s always been independent. He just shouldn’t always have to be,” Jack says, much calmer now, but his eyes never soften and remain filled with the cold accusations of an angry father. And Jack has every reason. Bruce remembers the fights with Dick, the day Jason left the manor and never returned. But Tim…it hadn’t gotten to that point. 

“Tim knows we’re there if he needs us,” Bruce justifies it. The alternative is too hard to accept. 

“I thought that too once,” Jack points out. His words are spoken softly, but Bruce still has to close his eyes against their onslaught. He couldn’t afford the same level of denial that Jack and Janet could. Tim was a vigilante, his night work was inherently dangerous. He needed his head in the game, needed allies that he could depend on if the time came. Jack is right, Tim is his son now, his responsibility. He needs…he needs more information. 

“What do you think the problem is?” Bruce asks, shoving all but the most important issue aside. Jack shifts his weight, scoffs at him with a single eyebrow raised. 

“I have a hard time believing the world greatest detective doesn’t know,” He bites at Bruce. And for a moment Bruce feels like a child again, trying not to cower under Alfred’s disapproving gaze because they both know he isn’t telling the whole truth. Bruce takes a single deep breath, then speaks. 

“Tim…feels insecure. He worries that Damian will take his place, not just as Robin, but as a member of the family. All of them fear that Damian will take priority over them to some extent, but none more so than Tim,” Bruce starts, his mouth going dry with the admission. He’d known, but had told himself it wasn’t a problem. He’d known that Damian being his biological son had put his adopted children in an odd position of insecurity, and yet he’d never pulled any of them aside to reassure them. But Damian was far from the only issue plaguing his second-youngest. 

“Tim’s life the past few years has been…inconsistent. He’s come to expect the worst. For things around him to change, for people to let him down. For people to die. That’s why he fought so hard to bring me back and why he pulls away now,” Bruce adds with a shake of his head. The words, finally said out loud, sound heavy and ominous. God…how had he overlooked Tim so badly? 

“See? There was no need to play stupid,” Jack responds. There’s a fire in his gaze even though the words seem to satiate him. Bruce doesn’t like his look or his implication. Doesn’t like any of this situation. Jack Drake hadn’t exactly been an ideal father either, who was he to…to what? Point out the facts? 

“I wasn’t ‘playing stupid’” Bruce growls, whipping his head to stare Jack down. “I understand the reasons, I just…I just…” 

“Don’t know how to fix it?” The man in front of him offers, “Were you waiting for Tim to make the first move? Or maybe for your older boy to fix it for you?! They’re your kids!” he yells with an outward flinging of both hands. 

“Enough! I don’t have to answer to a delusion!” Bruce roars back, flinging his own arm outwardly, his cape falling dramatically behind him. 

“It’s not a delusion, Bruce,” Jack reminds him, coldly this time. 

“Then what is this?!” Bruce yells back.

“Oh come on, Bruce! How many people have you seen come back from the dead?” Jack asks in clear frustration, “I don’t think your problem stems from a lack of belief so much as the fact that you don’t like what I’m saying!” 

Bruce has no response other than to turn away and let his cape shroud him as he looks over the bay. A silence falls between them, deafeningly quiet. Jack, the illusion, apparition or otherwise, wasn’t wrong about any of it. Bruce just wasn’t ready to face his own failures. Not like this. And he certainly wasn’t ready to face the reality that losing Tim may be more of a possibility than he’d wanted to admit. Bruce can feel his heart clench at the thought. He couldn’t lose, or even almost lose, another child. He couldn’t lose Tim. 

“What would you do?” Bruce asks quietly, not turning to face the man in front of him. 

“With Tim?” he hears, closer behind him than he’d expected. 

“We only have one common interest, Jack,” Bruce reminds the man, sparing a glance over his shoulder. Jack’s eyes are downcast, his face somber as he shoves his hands back into his pockets. 

“I’m not the best person to ask. He was so much closer to you than he ever was to me,” the man admits with a heavy sigh, “I guess you just need to talk to him. Don’t let him tell you he’s fine and change the subject, we both know that’s a lie. Then get him back home. I’ll never understand why, but he misses your screwy family,” Jack adds in with a soft, sad smile. 

Bruce takes in the words, but doesn’t have time to respond before Jack’s face changes completely to a look of urgency. “Listen, Bruce, I don’t have a long time. I’m not the only one who wants to speak with you tonight and I don’t know how much longer the spell is gonna last,” Jack explains, causing Bruce’s mind to race as he turns back to the man. 

“Who?” Bruce asks just as urgently. 

“You’ll see. Head down to crime alley. The part that even you don’t like to go to,” Jack tells him. Bruce’s eyes narrow suspiciously. It could be a trap. Though Bruce isn’t sure anything would surprise him at this point in the night. 

“I’ve gotta go, but just for the record…Tim could have done a lot worse than you guys,” Jack’s voice rings in his ears. 

Only a moment passes before he can no longer see the man. In fact, he can no longer see the mist that had enveloped him just moments ago either, and he can once again hear the crashing of waves from just off the docks. A cold wind blows, causing Bruce to suppress a shiver and wonder…had any of that actually happened?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The perfectionist in me is screaming right now, but I hope it's passable. Thanks to everyone who left comments and kudos on the last chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick note that the rating for this fic did have to go up after this chapter, so anyone sensitive to swearing and dark themes, be aware that you will start to see both here.

One time, when Bruce was about 12, Alfred caught him red-handed trying to sneak a handful of Halloween candy before dinner.

His guardian hadn’t been mad, per se. Bruce can still recall seeing a distinct amusement underneath his stern gaze as he’d asked why Bruce had felt it necessary to sneak candy so soon before a meal. Bruce remembered giving the man that was all but a father to him an excuse about being curious what they tasted like. It hadn’t been one of his better excuses in retrospect, the boys’ had come up with much better over the years, but he’d never had an easy time fibbing when it came to Alfred. 

It hadn’t been completely untrue, though. Bruce had always been the curious sort, whether it be the taste of a certain candy or finding out who had assassinated the mayor. He’d always had a burning desire to know. A hunger for truth and knowledge that could never be satisfied. 

Maybe that’s why Bruce finds himself in Crime Alley now. He isn’t sure what other force could have possibly possessed him to come to this part of the city after Jack Drake had told him to. Truthfully, he isn’t even sure he’d spoken to Jack Drake at all. It was so…implausible. And yet it felt so real. Either way, the conversation he may or may not have actually had has left him deeply unsettled in a way he hasn’t felt in ages. 

It isn’t hard for Batman to blend in on a night like Halloween. All he has to do is alter his mannerisms, little things like the way he walks, the way he holds his head, the way he stands, and everyone assumes he’s just some guy in a pretty good Batman costume. It’s a convenience that’s so rare to vigilantes on a normal night, but one that couldn’t be passed up when the opportunity presented itself. 

“Sweet Batman suit dude!” One young man dressed as a prohibition era mobster calls out from amongst his group of friends, but otherwise Bruce draws no unwanted attention as he walks without any real purpose deep into the bowels of Crime Alley. 

He knows he’s gone a little too deep when the laughter of children starts to sound distant and foreign. When the only people he sees are the ones who don’t want to be seen. His parents were killed mere blocks from where he stands now. He can practically hear the gunshots every time his mind wanders away from the task at hand. No matter how many years pass, that memory always haunts him whenever he finds himself in this part of the city. But this is nothing new, nothing he hasn’t accounted for in his training and so, he presses on deeper. 

The further he goes, the more he feels his skin crawl. It’s more than just the memories. There’s an atmosphere in Crime Alley that Bruce has always struggled to explain in words. It’s not as simple as a feeling of being watched, it’s more a feeling that someone was always sneering at you from within the shadows. The moment you entered you were seen as nothing more than the residents’ plaything, to be used and abused as they saw fit. If you were lucky enough to leave unscathed, it would take several days, and just as many showers, before you truly felt like you’d shaken the thick film of filth Crime Alley had left on you. 

Bruce eventually stops, though he isn’t sure what compels him to do so here, and now. It’s a strange location, a box-like dead end where three buildings met. A place Bruce would never normally enter unless his hand was being forced. It’s isolated, and the thick walls will likely wreak havoc on the communication signals. Worst of all, it only offers two, maybe three, ways out once entered. It’s the sort of place he’d chastise his children for going into without backup, though he wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that one or more of them had done exactly that on at least one occasion. 

The unusual mist he can see swirling from just within the alleyway, the cold chill that settles deep in his bones, however, tell him that this is exactly where he’s supposed to be. With narrowed eyes and a mind racing with possibility, he steps into the dead end. 

“Bout time you showed up. Clock’s ticking, you know,” A voice rings out from a shadowy corner. It’s familiar, almost hauntingly familiar, but…it can’t be…

“Jason?” Bruce asks slowly, heart beating fast as he takes hurried steps closer to the figure just behind the shadows. It couldn’t be Jason. Jason wasn’t dead anymore.

Unless…unless this whole thing had been a set-up? Bruce’s muscles tense in anger at the thought. The Red Hood hadn’t interfered with his crusade directly in months, nor had he made any real attempts to engage any other family members, but it didn’t necessarily mean Jason was done with them. Jason was persistent once he had a goal in his sights. 

But that doesn’t make sense, not completely. Jason hadn’t exactly turned a new leaf, but he had been on much better terms, even working with them on occasion when it served his purposes. The theory also does nothing to explain any of his encounter with Jack Drake. Still…that voice…

The faint glow of a street light catches a form as it steps out a little further from the shadows. For a moment, a fraction of a second at most, Bruce is convinced that it really is his second eldest son. He corrects himself just as quickly, though. This isn’t Jason. Their features are strikingly similar, yes, but this man is 20 years too old at least, his eyes much too dark, and although his physical stature is large like Jason’s, everything else about him screams ‘small’. 

“Heh. The infamous Batman finally graces me with his presence and he can’t even get my name right? Colour me disappointed,” The man says with a nasty smirk that extends all the way to his dark eyes, “I’m not Jason. Obviously. The resemblance is probably uncanny though.”

“You’re not Jason. You’re Willis Todd,” Bruce tells the man, realization dawning in an instant. The resemblance to Jason is indeed uncanny. Bruce had noticed it casually in the few mug shots he’d seen over the years of Jason’s father, sure, but the pictures could never tell him how similar their voices would become, how closely their mannerisms mirrored. 

But Bruce sees the differences between them as clear as day. He’s met hundreds of men like Willis Todd, had been personally responsible for sending most of them to jail as both Batman and as Bruce Wayne. They were proverbial cockroaches. Spineless men feeding off the scraps that larger beings had left behind. Jason was the antithesis of men like this, probably unable to stoop to their level if he tried. 

“Now that’s more like it. I’d give you a medal, but I’m super dead,” The man tells him in a mocking tone. Bruce has no time for games. 

“You wanted to speak with me,” he reminds the man. 

“What? The Batman doesn’t like small talk?” Willis inquires with a bitter smirk as he leans up comfortably against the brick wall beside him. 

“Like you said, we’re on a time limit,” Bruce says. There’s something about this man that he simply doesn’t like. He’s arrogant without having any merits to back up his attitude, and condescending in a way he hasn’t earned. Talking to him, to people like him, usually only ends in Bruce wasting his time and energy for nothing. If this man had been anyone else Bruce would have already left, but this time…he had to know why Willis Todd was here. 

“Jesus. Well nobody ever said you had social skills,” Willis huffs as he straightens his stance, “I wanted to talk to you about your kid.”

“What about Jason?” Bruce says, feeling suddenly defensive. He isn’t sure if the prospect of facing his own failure once again, or Willis’ words that make him uncomfortable. ‘Your kid’ rings over and over in his head. It isn’t so much that Bruce doesn’t feel the term is true, Jason was the first child he’d adopted, the first boy he’d ever officially called his son, but it feels strange coming from the mouth of Willis Todd, who should be taking responsibility for the boy he’d brought into this world and then damn-near abandoned. 

“Where do I start? Kid’s kind of a fuck up, if you hadn’t noticed,” the words roll off Willis’ tongue so easily, as if he were talking about the unfavorable outcome of last week’s baseball game. Bruce breaths in sharply, can feel the uncomfortable heat on his face rising. 

“No, he isn’t! He never was!” Bruce hisses before he can rationalize the words. Bruce will never agree with his methods, but Jason fights for those who can’t fight for themselves. Jason is twice the man Willis ever was, even on his worst day.

“You gonna stand there and tell me he was some ideal kid? That dying and coming back didn’t do something to him? You gonna tell me you’re proud of what he’s done? I ain’t,” Willis says, perturbed as he flippantly waves a hand at Bruce. 

“Your feelings are irrelevant,” Bruce tells him in a low tone, the same one he uses as a warning to those who are about to cross a line with Batman that they can’t come back from. “Jason is more than that. Perhaps you’d know that if you’d spent less time in jail and more time with your son.”

Despite the low blow Bruce had just dealt, the man seems oddly unfazed. He quirks his head slightly, leisurely shifts his gaze towards Bruce with nothing more than a slight frown on his weathered face. Bruce isn’t sure what he’d expected, but he’d thought, hoped, his words would garner more of a reaction than they had. 

“Hey, not all of us were born in mansions with silver spoons in our mouths. Some of us had to find other ways to put food on the table,” Willis says with a dramatic shrug, utterly unapologetic. 

“Is that what Jason would say you were doing?” Bruce asks, eyes narrowing behind the cowl. Jason had never spoken at length about his childhood, merely giving Bruce small insights here and there in his actions and his words. Glimpses of things that the police reports and medical records could never tell him. Stories of a young boy unsure of whether his deadbeat father was coming home tonight or if he wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t be provided for, for weeks. Stories of having to pack up and move from one cockroach infested apartment to another at a moments’ notice because the police were getting a little too close for comfort. Stories about getting a sick, twisted satisfaction upon seeing his father beaten by his ‘employer’ in the same way that he used to beat Jason’s mother on the bad nights. It painted a picture, even if incomplete, of how much the man in front of him had prioritized putting food on the table. 

“Heh. I guess not,” Willis says nonchalantly, as though telling a joke. Bruce can’t find the humour in the statement. In fact, it exasperates him completely. How can Willis, Jason’s own father, be so unaware of the hell he’d put the boy through? How could he care so little? No amount of curiosity could make Bruce willing to continue hearing any of it. 

“Why are you here? Why bother if you think so little of him?” Bruce asks, half angry, half exhausted by the man, or whatever he was, standing in front of him. 

The question burns hot in his own ears. Why had Willis bothered? Jack had wanted the best for Tim, had wanted what most any father would want for their kid, but Willis seems content to do nothing more than talk down about his own child. If this experience was truly paranormal, why would the spirit of Willis Todd have taken the time and effort to speak to him from beyond the grave at all?

“To remind you that you think the world of him, even if you don’t admit it,” Willis says, “I know you love him like he were yours. I know it,” Bruce pauses at the statement, breath caught in his throat, mind thrown off balance by the sharp turn of the conversation. Willis, the ghost, the illusion or otherwise, doesn’t wait for Bruce to collect his thoughts before rambling on. 

“You’re the best parent Jason’s ever had, you know? You’re right. I spent more time in the slammer than I ever did with him. Hell, a couple times I got out and never even went to check on them before picking up the next gig,” Willis admits with a shrug, shifting his weight to lean casually against the brick once more, “And you know what? It’s cause I didn’t want to deal with them. They were always whining, you know? Always talking shit about how much better off they were when I wasn’t there. So I just said ‘fuck ‘em’. Didn’t appreciate nothing, those two.”

“It doesn’t sound like you ever gave them much to appreciate,” Bruce says cuttingly. To his surprise the man smiles widely. 

“You know, I like you, Batman. You take people’s bullshit and you throw it right back at them,” the man says, nodding casually as he enjoyed his own inside joke, “Maybe in another life, me and you could have been friends,” he adds.

“I doubt that,” Bruce scowls down at the man. He pauses a single beat, mulling his next words over for a moment before speaking quietly, “What about his mother?”

“Sheila? Bitch never even wanted a kid. She stuck him with me and took off the first chance she got. We both know how the story with her ends,” Willis says darkly, the first real sign of anger he’d shown all night. It reminds Bruce so much of Jason.

Jason had been so angry when Bruce had first taken him in. At first Bruce had thought he could handle it. Dick had been angry too, at first, and his explosive temper had only gotten worse with time. But Bruce soon came to realize that Jason’s anger ran much, much deeper. It didn’t stem from the injustice of a single incident, but of a constant string of injustices that Jason had seen and experienced all throughout his few short years of life. It had left the young boy bitter, jaded and angry at the world. Bruce had tried, but ultimately, he couldn’t help. Not enough. 

Bruce will never forget how the story ended with Sheila Haywood. It ended with a crowbar and a bomb in a warehouse in Ethiopia. Bruce will never, ever forget the feeling of gently picking up his Robin’s, his son’s, cold, broken body from the rubble and realizing he’d been moments too late.

Jason was back now, but Bruce knew his actions that day, his inability to do more, had cost Jason dearly. The pit madness was one thing, but the emotional scarring…the memories…Bruce could barely handle them himself most days. It was his greatest failure, Batman’s greatest shame. 

“Catherine, though…she loved him,” Willis continues, breaking up the silence, “She looked at him the same way you do. Like he was worth something. Only problem is, in the end, she just loved the heroin more,” he says thoughtfully with a slight frown. Bruce still has no response, too lost in his own head, in the memories to interrupt. 

“I know you got this thing about how he’d have been better off if he’d never met you,” Willis continues on grimly when Bruce doesn’t respond, “For the record though, I don’t think so. Thing is, nobody escapes Crime Alley. Not really. He’d have ended up like the rest of us, dead in the street cause he was selling drugs, or doing drugs. Hell, maybe both. Just another body, thrown into Gotham Harbour and never found cause nobody cared enough to look for him.”

The image is hard to shake. Jason, his Jason, just another dead henchmen in Crime Alley to be disposed of before the cops found him first. Bruce wonders if that’s ultimately what had happened to Willis. He’d looked into the matter extensively, for Jason’s sake, but had never been able to get clarity on exactly what happened to the man after his final stint in jail. The only thing Bruce could determine with certainty was that he went to work for two-face shortly before the trail went cold. There were only conflicting reports after that. One henchmen had sworn up and down that the guy he’d helped beat to death’s name was William, but another was pretty sure it had been Willis. The others Batman was able to track down swore to him that there was no man at all. Every few years a body would turn up that could fit Willis’ description, but was always ultimately left unidentified. The thought of Jason sharing his father’s fate leaves a hollow feeling deep in Bruce’s chest. 

“Jason is too smart for that,” Bruce says, though the words sound strangely devoid of the anger and frustration he feels smoldering within him. 

“You have a point. Jason never would have been happy in the little leagues, running drugs so some other asshole can get rich,” Willis continues, brushing some of his greasy black hair out of his face, “He would have found his way into circles so dangerous even you couldn’t get into them. Probably would have gotten himself killed trying to work his way up if nothing else. Kid’s smart and all, but he was never smart enough to know when to quit, you know what I’m saying?” 

“Jason is better than that!” Bruce explodes, anger coursing through him like molten lava as he flings his cape back with an arm. He isn’t sure if it was the statement, or perhaps just Willis’ casual cruelty that finally causes the anger to bubble to the surface, but he’s had enough. Hallucination or not, figment or spirit, this man has no right to speak of Jason like this. 

“You’re damned right he is! He never belonged here!” Willis shouts back, pointing a finger directly in Bruce’s face, “That’s why you were the best of us! I don’t know what it was, but you saw something in him and got him the hell out of here! You tried when the rest of us had already given up on him! You’re still trying! I know it, he knows it and you know it too!” he growls. The words should be echoing through the alleyway, but they don’t. Instead, they sit stagnant and heavy in the air around them. 

There’s a stubborn logic to Willis’ statement, but for Bruce to accept that as fact seems like a monumental task. Yes, he’d tried. And if ever Jason wanted to return to them, Bruce would welcome him, even knowing the things he’s done. He’d be lying if he said he’s never hoped for it. There’s been a cavernous hole in the family since his death, a void that haunts them all year after year. After Jason’s return, that hollow spot had become bittersweet, at least to Bruce. Because now, unlike before, every holiday still sees an empty spot at the table, but it could so easily be filled. 

Outside the manor tonight sits four pumpkins. Alfred insists, every year, that the children carve them to put outside on Halloween. For many years there had been just one, carved by Dick. Then, before Bruce knew it, there were two. Bruce remembers the year that Alfred had forced Dick and Jason to carve pumpkins together. He’d been so on edge that year. The boys didn’t know each other, didn’t particularly like each other and both had rampant jealousy issues between them. Bruce had seriously questioned Alfred’s judgement when it came to confining them to a small space and equipping them with carving tools, but to his surprise the two hadn’t fought in any significant way. He hadn’t joined them, but hearing the two teen’s faint but civil conversation had filled him with a strange hope that maybe, somehow things would work out in the end. 

The following year there hadn’t been any pumpkins on the doorstep. 

Then Tim came along, and suddenly there were two pumpkins again. Then Cass, who had carved her first pumpkin in the manor kitchen under the watchful eye of Dick and Tim. And finally Damian, who had had fought tooth and nail against the tradition, but had ultimately been powerless against Alfred’s polite but firm insistence. 

Even that small bit of normalcy had started to feel like it was slowly slipping away. This year really hadn’t been a clean sweep for the tradition. Dick was entirely too old for the tradition, and Tim completely apathetic, but both took part for Alfred’s sake. Cass was still half-way across the world, so Stephanie had stepped up to carve the squash in her stead, and Bruce suspects that Damian’s pumpkin had actually been carved by Dick. 

Still, in the end they had somehow ended up with four pumpkins. There’d barely been enough room for all of them on the doorstep this year. Bruce had watched Alfred light them before leaving for patrol tonight, and each one had made him prouder than the last. But even that pride, the moment of happiness, wasn’t quite enough to bury the feeling that it really should have been five pumpkins instead of four. 

Bruce feels the bitter absence of Jason all the time, even though he’s, at times, only literal inches away. The son that he lost. The son that is always so close, and yet so far out of his grasp. And perhaps he deserves that pain. He may have been the best of them, as Willis had claimed, but deep down, Bruce is sure of only one single, staggering fact. 

“I still failed him,” Bruce says finally, bowing his head as a cold wind blows by. It isn’t the first time he’s made this admission out loud, and it feels justified that the words feel like sandpaper as they leave his lips. 

“You see? That’s what you two never seem to get. ’Failed’. Past tense. You know what’s cool about being alive, Bruce?” Willis asks with a smirk that has no place near Bruce’s brooding. Still, he is curious. 

“What’s that?” Bruce asks listlessly, only half interested in any answer the man will provide him with. 

“You get to move on. The past is all you get when you’re dead. Before that, though? The future is whatever you make of it,” Willis tells him with a shrug and growing smirk that only serves to annoy Bruce further. 

“Just say what you’re trying to say. I don’t have all night,” Bruce tells him, utterly sick of the man, the apparition, standing before him. If he hadn’t been Jason’s father, he’d have never given him the time of day, and now he just feels trapped in a conversation he’d never wanted to have, much too far in to back out. 

“Look, he needs someone to fall back on. Family. I mean, who else is gonna keep his head out of his ass?” Willis says, taking a deep breath in. It’s the first time in the whole conversation he looks even a little bit sincere. Bruce desperately wants to give Jason exactly that, any scrap of it he would be willing to take. A home, a family. He’s always wanted that for Jason. 

“…I can’t compromise my morals. Not even for him,” Bruce says as he turns away, allowing his cape to shroud over him. The issue always came back to this. It was like watching a snake eating its own tail. Every bit of progress it made would only serve to harm it further in the end. 

“Neither can he. You’re two peas in a pod that way, you two. Too stubborn to see what’s actually good for you,” Willis says with a mocking laugh. Bruce glares at him sidelong, but the man is undaunted as he continues “I know he’s a pain in the ass, but the whole morals thing sounds to me like a Batman and Red Hood issue, not so much a Bruce and Jason thing.”

Again, there’s a stubborn logic to the statement, but is it one Bruce is willing to accept? Batman can’t compromise his morals. Neither can the Red Hood. It’s the two vigilantes’ eternal struggle, the true source of their conflict with one another. Batman can’t kill, the Red Hood can’t allow criminals to continue killing. But does Bruce have the same issue? Does Jason? Have they ever actually made any attempts to find out? 

“I suppose,” is all Bruce says in the end. 

“Heh. It’s probably the best I’ll get out of you, huh?” Willis says. It’s dismissive, and Bruce can sense the conversation coming to a close. After all, what more could this man who rarely ever did anything for his son in life want now? But Bruce can’t let it go, not quite yet. 

“You’re wrong…about Jason. Jason is strong and ambitious. He’s smart. We may disagree, but know that he’s everything you never were,” Bruce tells the man calmly but coldly. 

“Still won’t give up on that, will you? Like I said, too stubborn to know what’s good for you,” Willis bites back. It’s about what Bruce had expected. His words have fallen on deaf ears. But he’d still been compelled to say them. 

“I’ll never give up on Jason,” he tells Willis, who breaks into a snarky smile and nods. 

“I know. I was counting on it,” Willis says, amused once again. Bruce isn’t sure he believes the man’s supposed good intentions towards Jason, not really. But it’s an issue for him to ponder later. After all, Willis is long dead and his night isn’t over. 

“You need to get going,” Willis tells him after a pause. 

“There’s someone else?” Bruce asks, fairly certain of the answer. 

“Yeah. Prepare to have your ear talked off,” Willis informs him with a roll of his dark eyes. 

“One question. Before I go,” Bruce requests. Willis regards him a moment. 

“Shoot,” he says, one eyebrow arched high with curiosity. 

“Why didn’t you confront Jason yourself…when he…?” Bruce starts and stumbles on the words unexpectedly. 

“Oh, when he died, you mean?” Willis asks. It’s likely a taunt, meant to get a rise out of Bruce, but he ignores it, pushes the surge of sorrow down deep in favour of finding the truth, “I never saw him. It’s tough to explain, but sometimes people die and they never really…I guess some people just ain’t supposed to be dead, ya know? A lot of you superhero types are like that. My thinking is you all are just too damn stupid to die, but who knows? Maybe someone thinks you balance out the universe or some other shit,” Willis says as if telling a sort of inside joke. Perhaps he is. 

“Interesting,” Bruce comments truthfully. It’s a fact he may share with the League one day if ever he gets the nerve to tell this story to another human being. He can just imagine Clark’s reaction, a polite smile and unintentionally patronizing nods as the man listened to a story he believed about as much as he believed the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. It’s enough for him to quash the thought entirely. “You said there was another…where will I find them?”

“Hmm, I figure you just find somewhere high off the ground. Chances are they’ll find you,” Willis says dryly. Then he pauses, somber, strangely honest for only the briefest moment.

“Just think about what I said, okay?” He asks Bruce, eyes turned away. Bruce knows he owes this man nothing, but knows he will agree anyway. Not for Willis, but for Jason. 

“I’ll think about it,” Bruce promises. In an instant, the mist starts to clear around him and Willis starts to dissolve back into the shadows. It’s only a moment before Bruce can once again hear the commotion of Crime Alley again. There’s a party going on two buildings over and a couple fighting loudly on the next block. It’s typical, expected of the area, and it goes on like it had never been interrupted in the first place. 

Bruce simply shakes his head, clearing out the cobwebs. He can’t make sense of this night, of what he has, or possibly hasn’t, seen. All he knows is that right now he needs to get the hell out of Crime Alley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well...so much for getting this one up before Halloween...


	4. Chapter 4

Every year the staff at Wayne Enterprises decorates for Halloween. It’s not a tradition Bruce started, nor is it one he particularly cares for, but the employees seem to enjoy it and Bruce always notices a huge boost in morale when the fake spider webs start going up. Bruce has never once decorated his office for the occasion, even as most of his employees were busy making plans and putting up pictures of their children in costume. 

He doesn’t have any pictures of his kids on Halloween. None that he can recall. For some reason, that thought hits him especially hard as he lands on the roof of Wayne Enterprises. It isn’t the tallest building in the city, nor is it the flashiest, but it offers, by far, the best unobstructed view of the entirety of Gotham. 

Dick had loved it up here the first time Bruce had brought him. He wasn’t Robin yet, there was no Robin then. Just a traumatized eight year old desperately trying to process all that the past few months of his life had thrown at him. He’d gotten restless at the manor, so Bruce had brought him to the office. He’d regretted that decision almost immediately. Dick never did ‘sitting still’ well and Bruce had spent most of his day chasing after a rambunctious and unhappy child. Bruce had brought him to the roof in an attempt to give him some air as well as his first real look at Gotham. Dick had been overjoyed being up so high, and had smiled so brightly that afternoon. Years later, Dick would tell him that it was the first time since his parents had died that things had felt normal, even if only for a few minutes. He’d said it reminded him of flying. 

That’s why when Willis Todd, or whatever it was that he had spoken to, had said to go to a high place, it was the first place his mind conjured up. His hunch is confirmed almost as soon as his boots touch the rooftop. 

The mist envelops him almost instantly, so thick that the view across Gotham becomes obscured, nothing more than a glowing haze at the furthest corners. He hears someone moving through the air behind him. The movements are practiced and graceful. Masterful. So masterful that for a moment he thinks it can only be Nightwing, but…Dick isn’t on patrol tonight. 

“Bruce!” he hears ring out from behind him, but before he can analyze the voice, question if it’s familiar or not, there’s another body on him. His first thought is to assume it’s an attack, but…no. This body, this freezing cold figure isn’t attacking him…it’s hugging him. 

Bruce doesn’t hug back. Doesn’t know how. So he does what he always does. He simply stands there, rigid and awkward, until the bestower of the hug gets tired and pulls away. 

She does, eventually. And Bruce realizes instantly that he knows this woman. They’ve never met, not officially, but he did see her once in life. Her pictures often graced the walls of the manor, both candid and promotional, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they hadn’t. Bruce would know those eyes anywhere. Dick’s eyes. 

“Mrs. Grayson…,” Bruce says in a sort of daze. It’s surreal to see the woman in front of him, so vibrant and vivacious. The pictures didn’t do her justice, could never capture her warmth and presence. 

“Bruce! It’s so nice to finally meet you!” She exclaims as she pulls away fully. Everything about her reminds him of his eldest son. Of her son. The eyes, the smile, the hint of a giggle in her words, “But please, call me Mary. After all, we share a son and you don’t get much closer than that.”

“Mary,” Bruce repeats slowly. She’s wearing the same costume as the night she fell. That night had been such a turning point in his life, almost as significant as the night his own parents had died. And not necessarily because of Mary and John falling, awful as that was, but because of one little boy who was forced to watch. 

“I’m so sorry we bombarded you with all this tonight. You must be feeling so overwhelmed,” She tells him, the regret in her voice mirrored in her eyes. 

“I’m still not convinced any of this is real,” Bruce confides in her. Why he admits it, why he tells her that at all, he doesn’t know. It’s not something typical of Batman. 

“It’s…an usual situation, that’s for sure,” Mary says with a soft laugh, before turning contemplative, “But…I guess it doesn’t really matter if it’s real or not, so long as it’s real to you,” she adds, her big, blue eyes boring straight through his lenses. 

“Perhaps,” Bruce concedes after a moment. The point was valid on some level, though Bruce much preferred evidence and fact over simple belief. 

“You don’t buy it,” Mary says with a melodic laugh, eyes sparkling. 

“It’s just hard to believe,” Bruce says, turning his eyes away slightly. 

“You remind me of my husband. He’d never have believed this either,” Mary tells him. Bruce’s eyes snap back to the woman, interest suddenly piqued. 

“Dick’s never said anything like that,” Bruce states, trying to recall any instance where Dick had implied that he reminded him of his father. But he comes up with none. 

“Ha! Well of course he hasn’t! He won’t even admit that you and he are alike, and we all know that isn’t true,” she quips and brushes a stray hair off her face, “You and John are alike in some ways. Skeptical, direct, so focused on the job that you forsake all others,” she teases with a bright smile. 

“Interesting,” Bruce says slowly, for lack of much else to say. It’s unsettling knowledge, that Dick’s mother thinks he shares similarities with Dick’s father. Bruce had never tried to replace any of his children’s parents, had actively tried not to over the years, but…he can’t help but wonder if Dick had seen the similarities and simply never said anything.

“Dick probably doesn’t remember him that way. How serious and stubborn John could get sometimes. He was only eight when we fell. Children tend to idealize their parents at that age,” Mary says ruefully, as if plucking the train of thought right from his mind. 

“Children idealize, but they don’t forget,” He replies, mind flashing briefly and unintentionally to his mother’s warm smile, his father’s voice as he read ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ to him at night. The thought is unbearable and so he quashes it just as quickly as it forms. “Was there anything in particular you wanted to speak to me about tonight? Mary?” 

The woman’s face goes stark for a brief moment, likely caught off guard by the sudden shift. “Yes. Yes there is actually,” she says with an animated nod that causes her hair to fall back into her face. “First of all, I wanted to thank you. For everything you’ve done for Dick. And for us. I wish there was a way, but I really don’t think I’d ever be able to thank you enough.”

“There’s no need,” Bruce says quickly, gruffly turning away from the woman, shrouding himself in the confines of his cape. He had expected shock, or scorn, had planned for anger and disappointment, but not this. Not the thanks of a woman whose son he’s spent the past 15 years damaging. He should feel relieved, but all he feels at Mary’s words is guilt. 

“Sure there is. You’re selling yourself short, Bruce,” she’s behind him now. Almost uncomfortably close. Like Dick would be in the same situation. Dick didn’t always have that particular sense of boundaries though. When he was little, he had almost no sense of boundaries at all. Bruce had struggled with the affection, and Dick had picked up on that. In just a few years Dick had learned not to hug, or to cuddle or to attempt anything more than necessary touch. But Bruce could see the boy still craved it, even now. And that was just the start of it. 

“I made him Robin,” Bruce tells her directly. 

“He made himself Robin, he just convinced you it was your idea,” Mary points out with a soft laugh. 

“It was a mutual decision,” Bruce replies back hastily, but the statement carries no weight. Bruce had realized almost right away that the then-nine-year-old had conned him. It had impressed him more than it had angered him, and had been one of the many reasons Bruce had agreed to train the boy in the first place. Getting one over on Batman was no easy feat, least of all for a child. Yet three had managed it over the years. Dick, with his instincts and charm, Jason with his wit and brazenness and Tim with his careful planning and stealth. He’d made all of them Robin, or at least that’s what he had told himself. 

“If you say so,” Mary says with a smile that fades slowly as the glint in her eye disappears completely. Bruce questions the sudden change in mood as she turns away, looking over the city, before she continues in a much quieter voice, “We used to let him preform without a safety net.”

“I know,” Bruce says simply. She turns her eyes to him, wide and haunted. 

“He performed the night we fell, in fact. It could have so easily been…he could have…,” Mary chokes out, lost for words for the first time since the conversation started. Bruce feels for her, shares the same fear. He of all people knew what it was like to watch your child enter into a dangerous situation. He knew too well what a close call felt like. 

“He didn’t,” Bruce interrupts, feeling compelled to offer whatever small comfort he can to the figure in front of him. She’s strong, he can tell. It’s an inner strength he can see in Dick too, on the difficult days. They’re strong, but they aren’t unbreakable. 

“You’re right. You’re right. He didn’t,” She says, taking a breath, composing herself before moving forward, “My point is that danger wasn’t new for him by the time you came along,” she says the words with a shrug, though doesn’t quite meet his eye as she makes the admission. “Regardless of any heroics involved, you still took him in when he needed someone the most. You took care of him even though you had every reason not to.”

“I suppose…I saw a little bit of myself in him. I thought I could help him. Not just as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne too,” Bruce tells her. It’s not often he’s able to be this open, this honest with another person. The thought crosses his mind that perhaps it’s foolish to do so tonight. This woman may not even be Mary Grayson. For all he knows, he’s currently speaking to nothing more than thin air. But her presence, real or imagined as the case may be, is undeniable. This woman is kind. She’s caring. There’s something about her that puts even the Batman at ease. 

“You did. You still do. You saved him in so many ways. You gave him more than a place to live, you gave him a family. You reminded him that there are still things in this world worth fighting for. I don’t know what would have happened to him if you hadn’t been there. I’m not sure I want to know,” Mary admits uncomfortably, crossing an arm over the other. She bores into him with her sparkling blue eyes, Dick’s eyes, open and vulnerable. If Bruce looked too hard, he could probably see into her very soul. 

Her fears for her son are both real and valid. Dick had been angry when Bruce had first brought him home. Angry and so, so sad. He’d hidden it well with smiles and reassurances that he was just fine, thanks. Even the social workers were commenting on how well the boy was taking the situation. Bruce had thought the same at first, until one night on patrol when he’d discovered his seemingly polite, well-behaved ward out on the streets, hell-bent on revenge for what had happened to his parents, and for what had happened to him. Bruce had ultimately given him another outlet for that anger and sadness, but a part of him had always wondered what would have happened had he not. Dick possessed an inherent goodness within him that Bruce had never once doubted, but even good people could be driven to do horrible things if pushed far enough. 

“Me and John always knew something could happen to us,” Mary starts, running one rambling thought into the next when the silence dragged on a little bit too long, “I mean, we advertised the act as ‘death defying’ and everything. It’s not like we were oblivious. People called us crazy for doing what we did all the time. And I don’t mean like, people who work in offices and rarely leave the house, but professional stuntmen. Daredevils. But we loved it. There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you fly,” she continues on wistfully, turning and taking steps towards the edge of the building as if she really could, in fact, take flight. Maybe she can. Bruce can’t say much of anything would surprise him tonight. “We always told each other that if the unthinkable happened, if one of us fell, that the other would stop preforming and take care of Dick. We never thought it would be both of us at the same time. Not like that. Not in front of him.” 

The silence drags between them for a long time after the comment has left her lips. Bruce remembers when she fell, so does Tim. He remembers the devastation it had caused, how traumatized Dick had been when he first came to live in the manor. But with time, Dick had managed to move on from the death of his parents, where Bruce could not. The event had left him bent, but not broken. Bruce firmly believed that there was something special about Richard Grayson. Something unshakable. A light inside him that could never be dimmed completely. 

“He never would have let you stop. I have the broken chandeliers to prove it,” Bruce says. The words aren’t at all light-hearted, or at least he hadn’t intended them to be, but it somehow draws the faintest of smiles from Mary’s otherwise solemn face. 

“Maybe not,” she concedes softly “I used to worry that we were pushing him too hard to follow in our footsteps, but…he always loved it when we let him fly. You know the way his eyes light up sometimes when he’s about to jump from the side of a building? It was the same back then,” she says softly before turning her gentle blue eyes towards Bruce, sidelong over her shoulder, “Maybe that’s why I don’t hate the vigilante thing as much as I should.” 

Bruce’s head turns sharply at her words, words he never would have expected to hear from his son’s mother. From any mother. But there’s a strange understanding in Mary’s eyes as she continues and it reminds him of the looks Alfred has been giving him for years. She doesn’t approve, not really, but somehow she understands. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it. I’d rather he not be shot at every night, or occasionally end up on a surgeons table, but…what you all do, it means the world to him. He loves it. The challenge, the flying through the city, helping people. He always thought of others before himself, you know?” She pauses only a split second before her melodic laugh rings out over the rooftop, “What am I saying? Of course you do! You raised him! You did well, by the way. He’s a good man. The kind me and John always wanted him to be.” 

“He’s…very highly regarded. Both professionally and personally,” Bruce says, uncomfortable and undeserving, of the praise from this woman. Her warmth is making him squirm in a way that no villain in Gotham ever could. 

It’s like this with Dick sometimes too. Emotionally intense. Dick had been with him for years now, but still Bruce struggles with his open, earnest nature. Dick had always worn his heart on his sleeve, a trait in him Bruce admires deep down, though can never quite match. Dick had always had the innate ability to speak his mind, to not shy away from things like love and affection. When Dick loved someone, he loved and accepted them with his whole heart. He was never afraid to show it or to speak the words. Bruce had always seen this as bravery, the mere thought of doing the same making him recoil internally. 

“I’m not surprised,” Mary says with a smirk, “I’m biased, of course, but I always thought he was something special.” Bruce wants to tell her that she’s right. That Dick is something special. He wants desperately to tell her how proud he is of the young man, but he can’t. The words are caught deep in his throat, just like they always are. She doesn’t seem to wait for them as she moves closer to the edge of the rooftop. If it had been anyone else, Bruce would have been concerned, but this woman is probably more comfortable up here than she ever would be on the ground. She looks over with confidence and grace. 

“They’re so cute in their little costumes,” she says. There should be wind blowing through her hair, but the air is still. Her ponytail only moves in response to her animated movements. “He’s out there tonight isn’t he? Trick-or-treating with Damian?” 

“Much to Damian’s distaste, yes,” Bruce confirms as he goes to stand beside her. The children look like ants from this height, but even from his vantage, he can see them playfully bouncing along. It’s getting late, many of them are probably heading home after another quiet Halloween in Gotham. 

“I’m glad he ended up with siblings. John and I always wanted to have more kids. You can only fit so many in a 16 foot trailer though,” she says with a wispy laugh in his direction. 

“I never thought I’d have any,” Bruce admits. He’d never planned to have children. He’d always told himself that the world was too dark and damaged to bring a child into. Dick had come along, but Bruce had told himself for years that he wasn’t the boy’s father. He’d tried to be a father to Jason, had tried to avoid making the same mistakes with him as he’d made with Dick, but somehow he’d made it worse. Jason had died. Tim had had a father when he’d come into Bruce’s life, and that suited him just fine at the time. He wasn’t ready to be anyone’s father. He didn’t have to be. Cass had Barbara and Dick was legally an adult. None of them needed him then. 

And yet, he’d felt a compulsion, a need, to make things official with Dick. To admit what he’d always known, and felt deep down. Dick was his son in everything but blood. 

It had opened the door for the others, had made Bruce less afraid. When Tim’s father had died, it was only natural that Bruce would be the one to take him in, to make him his son officially. And Cass, who had somehow eked out a special place in his heart, had needed and deserved a real family. Damian had been…a surprise. A biological child had felt strange for Bruce, not solely because of his conscious decision not to have children, but because, oddly enough, Damian had been the only child he hadn’t chosen. 

“So much for that, huh?” Mary laughs at the statement. Bruce almost cracks a smile at the casual comment before remembering that Batman doesn’t smile. 

“You came to speak to me about more than just Dick’s achievements, haven’t you?” Bruce states as he takes a slow step closer to her form. The woman crumples ever so slightly, closing her eyes and hanging her head softly, before she turns to him full on. 

“Yes,” she admits as her blue eyes open fully. The joy in them has ebbed. Bruce can see it as clear as day. “I like talking about those too, of course, but I only have so much time.” 

“What is it?” Bruce asks, though he doesn’t want to know. He isn’t sure he can handle more of the stark, brutal truth tonight. As it stands, he was already failing Tim and had driven Jason so far away that he may never come back, but he has to know. This may all be some fantasy, but it wasn’t without value. He wouldn’t let it be. 

“He…he’s had a rough year, Bruce,” she nearly stumbles over her own words as she looks briefly into the night sky, “I don’t think he’s handling it anywhere near as well as he wants everyone to believe he is,” she adds before he can fully process the first half of her statement. 

Everyone knew the past year had been hard for Dick. Bruce hadn’t asked a lot of questions, not outside of business anyhow, but somehow he’d known Dick had sacrificed and struggled the whole time. It was never stated outright, but it was a story told in the unsaid. It was laced in Clark’s words every time they’d spoken of his absence, present in the sympathetic looks Donna Troy shot at Dick whenever his time as Batman was mentioned, and the way Wally West would clumsily try to steer the conversation away from the topic. Dick had endured, and had succeeded, but Bruce had never asked the cost.

“Is he…okay?” Bruce asks slowly as a gust of wind blows through his cape.

“He’s sad, I think. I’m sure you’ve noticed how guarded he’s been since you got back, among other things. We both know he only does that when something is wrong,” she says, eyes stormy and downcast, just as Dick’s had been on several occasions recently before he’d noticed Bruce had been looking. But that wasn’t new with Dick. He went through phases, periods where he was just…down for a while. It had been happening since his teens. Dick had always insisted it was nothing, but Bruce found it far from coincidental that the episodes typically coincided with some negative event in his personal life or a particularly difficult anniversary. Bruce knows the signs well, as does Tim and most of the Titans. Between them, they can usually stop it from snowballing. Usually. 

“He’s been closed off,” Bruce states after a small pause. The words come out in a rush and the admission feels both like a weight lifted and another gained, “He’s been present, yet distant. Talkative, but without really saying anything,” Bruce admits with shame crawling up his throat after the words. 

“I know the feeling,” Mary says as if sensing his very thoughts, “He’s right there, but at the same time he’s a million miles away,” She moves an arm slowly to rest on one of Bruce’s shoulders, giving it a soft squeeze with her ice cold hand. “He’s always done that, even when he was little. This one time, when he was…Five? No, I think he’d just turned six, he broke his wrist falling off the uneven bars.” 

“Oh?” Bruce urges her to continue when she pauses, ever attentive to her audience, ever the showman. He’d known about the broken wrist, in addition to many other small injuries Dick had sustained in training. It had all been in Dick’s medical records, the totality of which he’d memorized even before taking the boy in. Bruce realizes that is far from the point she’s trying to illustrate for him though. 

“John had probably told him a million times not to practice alone. He never told us exactly how he hurt himself, but I bet you anything he fell trying to pull off some stunt he was nowhere near ready for. I swear we had to watch him every second,” she says with a laugh. Even Bruce can feel a soft smile forming n his face. He knows the feeling. He remembers clearly Lucius Fox’s shocked face one day at the office when he’d come in to tell Bruce that his ward had somehow climbed into the ceiling when no one was looking. There’s a long, thoughtful pause before Mary continues. 

“He hid it so well that we didn’t find out about it for a day and a half. It probably would have been even longer if john and I hadn’t decided to squeeze one more practice in before packing up and leaving for the next set of shows. He tried so hard to fight through it, but it was pretty obvious something had happened after we realized he couldn’t hold on to the bar properly. I can’t imagine how much it had to have hurt.” She finishes in a much softer tone. 

“He’s never told me that story,” Bruce tells her. 

“Well, it isn’t one of his finer moments,” She replies with a casual shrug and a small chuckle that isn’t quite reflected in her eyes. 

“Did he ever say why he hid the injury?” Bruce asks her. He’s curious. Dick has hid injuries on many occasions, and Bruce knows to expect that of Dick, but he’s never quite gotten to the bottom of the odd behavior. 

“Not specifically. We asked him, of course. At first he said he didn’t want to get in trouble, which I think was partially true, but it turned out later that he’d been much more concerned about letting everyone down than anything else. He thought we’d be disappointed if he couldn’t do the shows. We never would have been but…I guess he didn’t see it that way,” she says simply despite the slump in her shoulders, the sad look in her eyes. Bruce can practically taste the guilt rolling off of her. 

“Is that what he’s doing now?” Bruce asks. 

“He’s been trying so hard to be everything to everyone at the expense of himself. It’s a lot for one person to carry by themselves. What’s worse is that he feels like he’s failing at all of it,” Mary tells him, body tense for the first time this night. 

“Failing?!” Bruce exclaims, “he’s the only one holding things together most days. He was the only one holding things together while I was…” Bruce stops dead. He isn’t sure what term he should use. Dick always said ‘missing’, while Tim used ‘lost’ to describe the situation. But the fact is, he was all but dead to them for most of that time. 

“I know. Our little Robin is a perfectionist though. His achievements never shine anywhere near as bright for him as the failures. Sure, he held things together while you were gone, but only just barely. And while you guys see how far Damian’s come, he only sees how far he still has to go. He blames himself for not doing more sooner. And the fighting with Tim and Jason…I can give you two guesses who he puts the blame on for that, but you’ll only need one,” Mary tells him without pause. Straightforward, yet kind, in a way that few can ever hope to pull off. The words rattle him, but he’d expected them. Expected Mary’s kind eyes boring into his very soul. And yet, a part of him is unwilling to admit to that which he already knows. 

“If that’s the case, then he’s being too hard on himself,” Bruce says. He stands straighter, larger than necessary and he isn’t sure why. This woman is clearly unfazed by the stance that makes criminals, grown men, shake in their boots. 

“We both know that isn’t anything new,” she calls him out, her ponytail swaying gently as she shakes her head, “but it’s getting out of hand. He’s got this idea in his head that he’s gotta be the anchor that keeps the ship from drifting off into open sea, but I think, in actual fact, he’s only hanging on by a thread some days,” she tells him. Her eyes turn away briefly, her face hard and pensive, before she turns her attention back to him fully, eyes once again seemingly looking straight through the lenses of his cowl and into his own, “He’s heading for a breakdown, Bruce.” 

Bruce can practically feel the air leave his lungs at the statement, can feel his mind cloud with the bitter panic that only comes when he knows one of the children are in some sort of danger. He doesn’t let it overtake him, he never does, but it still puts his nerves on edge, his mind into high gear. He isn’t ready for the assault of memories or the hopeless feeling that accompanies them. 

“Bruce what’s wrong?” Mary’s gentle voice cuts through his thoughts. It’s a rare slip for him in the cowl, one he will berate himself for later he’s sure, but at the moment he’s in too deep to back out. 

“This has happened before,” Bruce admits as a hand comes up to rest against his bowed head, “a couple years ago. In Bludhaven.” The admission fells like a mouthful of salt. Both he and Dick had been pretending for years that the incident wasn’t as big a deal as it was. But they both knew. 

Bruce could only count a handful of times in his life he’s been more afraid than those six months. The night his parents were shot dead, the moment he’d watched that warehouse in Ethiopia go up in flames, learning that Barbara Gordon had been shot by the Joker, the sound of his own back cracking over Bane’s knee...and yet it had been a different fear. A slow burn. Dick had made enemies, dangerous ones. All of them had, but none of them had gone after them personally, not like Blockbuster had done with Dick. Bruce had learned many of the details too little too late. Dick had tried to handle it on his own and when he’d gotten in over his head, he hadn’t called for help. Bruce had thought at the time that it had been because he didn’t need it, not because he didn’t know how to ask. 

Blockbuster’s death was sudden and mysterious. By the time Bruce had caught wind of it, the scene had long since been contaminated by the efforts of the Budhaven PD. But still all signs had undeniably pointed to Nightwing being involved in some capacity. Bruce doesn’t think that Dick was the one to pull the trigger, but…Dick’s behavior had been erratic following Donna Troy’s death and anything was possible. Whatever had happened, it had been enough to send his eldest spiraling into a series of poor decisions. Distancing himself from friends and family, taking on dangerous missions that he had no business trying to take on by himself, not to mention joining the damn mob. Bruce had been terrified for him in a way that he hadn’t known was possible, and yet that fear also prevented him from stepping in. Jack had been correct in his assessment earlier. Bruce had been, still was, afraid to step in because the last time he’d tried to do so, it had sent Dick running even further away. So far that Bruce didn’t know if he’d ever find his way home again. 

“Yes. Yes, but that was….different. I know you two haven’t ever really talked about it, but…I think he needs to. There’s more to that story than he’s willing to admit,” Mary says quietly, her voice almost lost in the cold night air. 

“How much more?” Bruce asks, looking out over the city. He isn’t sure how much more he can take tonight. 

“Enough to keep him up at night,” is all Mary offers, but it’s more than Bruce needs to realise it’s something bad. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath to steady himself as he shakes his head…Tim, Jason, Damian, Cass…how was he going to help them when he couldn’t even help Dick? 

“I…I’d love to talk more, Bruce, really I would, but I think I’m running out of time. Lord knows there’s never enough,” Mary says with a hollow, joyless laugh that ends just as abruptly as it starts “Eight years really does come and go in the blink of an eye. I’m grateful to you, Bruce, I truly am. I just wish we’d had more time with him,” her words come out thick, her whole face etched with the pain of a mother who has been torn from her child. Had his own mother felt…when she…? No. No he couldn’t allow himself to think those thoughts. Not tonight. Not ever. 

“Tell me what I can do,” Bruce says, pleads with the woman before him. Her tearful eyes flicker to his once again, confused for a moment, as if she’d forgotten completely what they had been talking about before. Bruce wonders for a moment if indeed he’ll need to remind her, but he banishes the thought as recollection seems to cloud her expression. As her eyes dry and fill with a resolve that comes from the very depths of her soul. 

“Just…make sure he knows that he can fall apart and you’ll all still be there if he needs help picking up the pieces,” she says, making is sound so much simpler than Bruce could ever imagine it to be, “he just needs to be reminded that you’ll love him even if he isn’t perfect.” 

“He…he can’t be questioning that. Of course we…” Bruce blurts out impulsively. He’ll never understand why the last part of that sentence always burns like fire when he tries to say it. He loves his children, something that for a long time he’d thought he’d never really be capable of, so why can’t he just say it in words? Maybe if he could just say it, if he could just do that one thing, then Tim wouldn’t be feeling like he had to distance himself from them. And maybe Damian wouldn’t be acting out so much. Would it be enough to convince Cass to come back to Gotham? Could it have prevented Dick from leaving him? Would it have saved Jason’s life? “That’s ridiculous!” Bruce exclaims through clenched teeth, suddenly angry. 

“It isn’t ridiculous to him,” Mary points out, her gentle tone feeling like a slap in the face. She is right, of course. In that same stubborn way Alfred often is. It isn’t about his own feelings on the matter, or how Dick should already know that he’s loved without being told every ten minutes. It’s not about what he’s already done, it’s about what he isn’t doing now. About the things he’d been ignoring in the hopes that they’d sort themselves out in time. 

“He’s been…off. Distracted, unwilling to slow down. I noticed but…I misread the situation,” Bruce says as he turns from the mother of his eldest son. The admission does nothing to clear his conscience. It sounds as though Mary was about to speak, but Bruce continues before she has the chance, “No. No that isn’t true. I saw what I wanted to see. I made excuses, I…I turned a blind eye. Not just with Dick, but with all of them.”

Bruce turns back to her, to face her. The truth is out, hanging in the air between them. He expects her wrath, her scorn, or her disapproval at the very least. He isn’t prepared for her sad smile, her warm, understanding gaze. A part of him is infuriated by her in that moment, in her understanding. In her sympathy. He should be condemned for what he’s done and Mary Grayson doesn’t seem to understand that. 

“No parent wants to see their children suffer. I get it,” she says, though refrains from moving any closer. That…that compassion in her eyes though, the way she fidgets with the hands clasped in front of her. Bruce can see she wants to move desperately, but she holds herself back for his sake. Just like Dick so often has to. 

“I’ve hurt Dick more than any of them,” he tells her in a vain attempt to make her understand. He’d hurt that child so many times, in so many ways. He couldn’t even venture a guess at how many times he’d told Dick he wasn’t his father, couldn’t count how many times he’d made the boy cry. He can still sometimes feel the burn in his palm remembering the handful of times he’d lost his temper completely and struck him. 

“He forgives you,” Mary tells him softly, finally giving in to her urge to move towards him. It was always like that. Dick always forgave him. Somehow. And yet Bruce never felt like he could do enough to make up for hurting him in the first place. 

“How…? How do I explain to him…?” Bruce stumbles over his words as she approaches. She’s easily a whole head shorter than he is, but in this instance, he’s the one who feels small in her presence.

“That you love him?” She offers with a tilt of the head, “He already knows you love him, he just needs to be reminded how much. You’ll have to figure out the ‘how’ for yourself though,” she teases lightly.

“I don’t understand how you can forgive me so readily,” he confides in her with a shake of his head. Mary takes his hand in both of her icy ones. 

“There’s nothing to forgive. He’s our son, I know you wouldn’t hurt him intentionally,” Mary says with the same unshakable faith he sometimes sees in Dick. She doesn’t doubt her words, not at all. “You’ll figure it out Bruce. With Dick, and with the rest of them too.”

“You can’t know that,” Bruce says, so quietly that even he almost misses the words. His hand is freezing, and this is probably all some delusion, but it’s still strangely comforting to have Mary Grayson here. 

“Maybe not, but I still believe it,” she tells him, the smallest of shrugs accompanying her words. It’s only a fraction of a second later when she releases his hand, casts her eyes downward. “I think my time is up. I’m glad we were able to have this talk,” she says softly, though sad. 

“Where do I find the next one?” Bruce asks, keeping it professional while also trying to distract her from her own emotions.

“Next one? There is no ‘next one’, Bruce. I’m it,” she says, bright, familiar blue eyes flickering up to meet the lenses of his cowl.

“What? But… Cass? Damian? Isn’t there anyone for them?” Bruce asks in a rush. It had been a bad night, yes, but the insight he’d gained…the realization that he could step in and help solve things…

“Of course there’s someone for them. That’s you, Bruce. I know the term makes you uncomfortable, but you’re their dad. You’ll just have to look out for them the same way that we looked out for our kids tonight,” Mary tells him, once again making a complex issue sound as simple as making a sandwich.

“But Mary…,” Bruce pauses, chokes on the words a little, “what if that isn’t enough?” he finally gets out in a tone he barely recognises as his own voice. Fear isn’t something he’s familiar with, at least not first hand. He’s much better at striking it into others than he ever was at feeling it himself. But when he does feel fear, he feels it right down his bones. So intense that it can be paralyzing. And he fears failing his children above all else. 

“Oh, Bruce. There’s nothing to worry about. Love is always enough.” 

Bruce listens as the words fade into the night sky, watches as the mist around him lifts. Mary Grayson is gone, he knows this before his eyes even bother to scan the area for her. From this height he can’t hear the laughter of children anymore. He can only make out the vague shapes of people down below, the faint glow of lights and the odd jack-o-lantern in someone’s apartment window. 

The air whips up around him, blowing his cape forward where Mary had stood just moments before. It was…an illusion. It had to be. A figment of his own imagination. These…’ghosts’ hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t already known. And yet…Mary’s hand on his arm had felt tangible, even if icy. He’d known Jack in life. Had known his behaviors and mannerisms, but he had never known Mary or Willis. Mary’s words ring out in his mind once more. ‘I guess it doesn’t really matter if it’s real or not, so long as it’s real to you’. Then other words come, memories, all in a rush. 

‘He already knows you love him, he just needs to be reminded how much’

‘You’re two peas in a pod that way, you two’

‘I think you know as well as I do that we only have one common interest, Bruce’ 

‘It’s not ridiculous to him’

‘Tim doesn’t tell people when something is wrong. He tries to deal with things on his own and when he can’t he…he goes back to what he knows. He goes back to being alone’

‘I wanted to talk to you about your kid’

‘What’s worse is that he feels like he’s failing at all of it’

‘Were you waiting for Tim to make the first move? Or maybe for your older boy to fix it for you?! They’re your kids!’

‘You’ll figure it out Bruce. With Dick, and with the rest of them too’

‘I’m glad you adopted him’

‘You’re the best parent Jason’s ever had, you know?’

‘Of course there’s someone for them. That’s you, Bruce’

Bruce stands frozen on the rooftop, desperately trying to make sense of all that he’s seen, all that he’s realized. Alfred would likely call this night a blessing if Bruce ever decided to tell him about it, but at the moment it felt much more like a curse. A dark, heavy shroud upon his shoulders. Blessing or curse, real or imagined, he wouldn’t squander it. 

Things were going to change. And they were going to start changing tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This. Took. Forever. I'm not as happy with it as I want to be, and the editing is poor. This fic was going to be longer originally, but I needed to move on to other stories. I think what is going to happen is that I'll post the rest as something of a direct sequel starting next September/October. It just feels weird to write Halloween stories around the Christmas tree...
> 
> Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the first fic in this (appearant) series! A huge thanks for all the kudos, bookmarks and comments you guys have been dropping!

**Author's Note:**

> My obligatory Halloween fic. I actually wrote this last year and ran out of time/confidence and never posted it. It isn't going to be as polished as I'd like it to be, because I am re-writing it and I've given myself a fairly strict deadline, but I hope it's enjoyable overall. Even if it is a bit rough, the tenses are out of whack and I've bent the timeline to my will...
> 
> As always, if I've made any mistakes, let me know!


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